


A Few Inches to the Left

by deepwizardry



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, dale cooper/harry truman - Freeform, i do not care about metaphors or symbolism i am going to fix this sad as fuck ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28444770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepwizardry/pseuds/deepwizardry
Summary: After Cooper enters the Black Lodge, something begins to feel increasingly strange for Harry, but not necessarily in a bad way.
Relationships: Dale Cooper/Harry Truman
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	A Few Inches to the Left

**Author's Note:**

> hey folks welcome back to me doing some bullshit! this is my first Ever fanfiction (besides some shit i wrote in fifth grade on wattpad, we don't talk about that) and i also rarely read fics so sorry if this is Weird As All Fuck. also i know that twin peaks is a metaphor and i love the metaphor and i know that this completely destroys the metaphor but honestly? i don't care that much! i really hope you enjoy :)

Harry had a strange feeling of déjà vu.

Maybe it was because he had been staring at the same small circle of trees for hours now. The sun had burned away the fog, Andy had come by asking if he wanted food, and a squirrel had skittered through the leaves. But there was no Cooper.

There was something strange about this place. It was the same sort of strangeness that his father had told him about when he took a much younger Harry to the Bookhouse for the first time. It was that same sort of strangeness that seeped out of the rocks in Owl Cave. Harry couldn’t quite put it into words, but there was something monumentally _wrong_ about that circle of trees. 

And what’s more: Harry was curious. All his life he had been searching for answers of what was out there in the Douglas firs that made Twin Peaks so different. And now he was sitting in front of the well of it all and his best friend was in its depths and there was nothing he could do to take a peek or stick his hand down into the darkness to pull Cooper out.

_Cooper will tell you about it when he gets back_ , he kept thinking. _Cooper will tell you what’s in there. Then you’ll know._

But as the minutes ticked by and the sun sank back under the horizon, Harry was less and less sure that Cooper even would come back.

Everyone except the owls watching in the trees was surprised when Cooper stumbled out of the circle of trees, clutching a bleeding girl.

* * *

Cooper was dead asleep in his room at the Great Northern. Annie was in the hospital. And Harry was starting to get the sense that something was wrong.

Not that something was wrong with Cooper--Doc Hayward had looked him over once, and then again at Harry’s request. No, Harry had the strange sense that what was playing out was off script, that the world had shifted slightly to the left. He felt like his feet weren’t exactly on the ground; that he was floating a quarter inch off the soft carpet. Again, he couldn’t place the feeling, but something just felt _off_. 

Cooper opened his eyes.

“There he is,” muttered Doc Hayward as Cooper’s eyes flickered.

“Coop?” Harry said quietly.

Cooper smiled weakly. “Hey, Harry.”

A weight lifted off of Harry’s shoulders, and the world shifted another inch to the left. It wasn’t that something was wrong, he realized. It was that something was very, very right.

Cooper’s expression shifted from exhausted happiness to frantic bewilderment. “Annie? How’s Annie?”

The phrase caught Harry by surprise, and he suddenly felt despair in his sternum. The déjà vu was back, but this time it brought visuals. The sound of shattered glass, and blood everywhere…

“Harry?”

Cooper was looking at him expectantly, his brow furrowed in worry. Harry felt the world shift back, and the scene was gone.

“Annie’s gonna be fine. She’s in the hospital.”

Doc Hayward spoke this time. “She’s in shock, but she’ll pull through just fine.” The doctor looked at Cooper like a father to a disobedient son. “As are you. I want _bed rest_ this time, alright? I don’t want to see you wandering around investigating like after you got shot.”

Cooper smiled and mock-saluted. “Yes, sir.”

Harry noticed something in Cooper’s eyes just then. He caught a glimpse of that world that was all wrong again and Cooper’s eyes looked glossy, almost as if he had been crying but with none of the redness. But here, Coop’s eyes were sparkling. Something had placed bright stars in his eyes when he was born. This wasn’t new; Harry wasn’t sure when he had noticed it first, maybe when they first met at the hospital. But now, it made all the difference.

“Are you alright?” asked Cooper, looking at Harry.

“You’re asking _me_ that?” Harry replied.

* * *

Harry was sitting in the Bookhouse, nursing a month-old beer that he had pulled out of the fridge in the back. He had always seen the warm wooden place as a spot for quiet reflection, and it felt like an appropriate place for Cooper now that he was walking around again. It was quiet except for the sound of Cooper conversing with Gordon Cole (who had somehow obtained the number for the Bookhouse) over the phone, which meant that it was very loud. Harry could hear every word each party was saying.

“SO YOU’RE GOING TO MAIL YOUR REPORT OUT TO PHILADELPHIA TOMORROW?” asked Gordon.

“OF COURSE. I HAVE IT ALL TYPED OUT FOR YOU,” replied Cooper.

“GREAT. I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS FOR YOU, COOP. I’M SORRY THAT ALL OF THIS HAPPENED BUT I AM VERY HAPPY THAT YOU ARE STILL HERE TO TELL US ABOUT IT ALL. I AM NERVOUSLY AWAITING YOUR REPORT. OH, AND ALBERT WANTS TO SPEAK TO YOU.”

The line was quiet, presumably because Cooper’s colleague Albert (with whom Harry had a complicated history) was on the phone. 

“Thank you, Albert,” Coop said softly after a few moments. It seemed like his voice was worn out after talking to Gordon. “See you soon.”

He hung up the phone. The Bookhouse was truly quiet now, except for the soft hum of the lights above the pair. No one else was there, and this made Harry inexplicably nervous.

“Want a beer?” asked Harry. He had a second bottle.

“Sure,” said Cooper. He looked like he had run a mile with none of the sweat. It had been a few days since Coop had reappeared and he had been in bed most of the time. Despite this fact, Coop had confided in Harry that he couldn’t sleep. For someone who had gotten right back up after being plugged three times, he seemed awfully beat. 

The duo sat in silence for a few moments, sipping the watery beer. Neither of them wanted to speak.

Harry finally spoke. “So-”

“-you want to hear what happened,” Cooper replied.

Harry felt himself heat up a few degrees. If there was anything he should have learned by this point, it was that Cooper was always a few steps ahead of him. “Yeah.”

Coop straightened up. His voice took on the tone of voice that Harry knew indicated a story coming on, whether it be about Tibet or one of his strange dreams.

“I was standing in a room of red curtains, not unlike the one in the dream I had shortly after I arrived in Twin Peaks. The little man was there, and that waiter from the Great Northern gave me coffee. I saw Laura, and the giant. A short while later, I saw the little man and Laura again, but they were not… _them_. They were doubles.”

“Doppelgängers,” Harry stated quietly. Cooper nodded.

“Precisely. Suddenly, I was bleeding. I saw Annie dead next to my own body.”

“Christ.”

“Windom Earle appeared. He said that I could trade my soul for Annie’s.” Cooper took a deep breath and exhaled with a sigh. “I agreed. But we were interrupted. BOB appeared and stated that Windom could not take my soul, and that he would take Windom’s instead.”

The pair were silent for a second while Cooper collected himself. He was not looking at Harry; instead, he appeared to be scratching something into the tabletop with his nail.

“Then?” Harry prompted.

“My own double appeared and chased me. I knew that he would not stop until he caught me, and there was no way I could outlast him forever.” Cooper looked up at Harry now, and his eyes were glossy this time, the stars dulled. “It was the most terrified I have ever been in my life.”

Harry laid a hand on Cooper’s shoulder, unsure what to say. He supposed that the gesture was enough.

“Then the strangest thing happened. Just as his fingers scraped my back, an invisible hand took hold of me and lifted me up and away. I saw an angel and Laura Palmer with tears in her eyes and myself 25 years in the future. I saw Diane and Albert and Gordon and Lucy and Andy and Hawk and your brother, Frank.”

Harry started. He was fairly certain that Cooper was unaware of Harry’s familial ties. “My _brother_?”

Cooper nodded. “The next thing I knew, I was on the ground in Glastonbury Grove with Annie.”

Another moment of silence passed as the two contemplated the words that Cooper had said. Harry couldn’t believe his ears, but Cooper had never been wrong up to this point. They were both breathing in tandem.

“Does the whole world seem different to you?” Harry asked quietly. “I can’t explain it, but something feels--well, not wrong, but-”

“-like everything shifted a few inches to the left,” Cooper finished.

“Yeah.” They were both glossy-eyed now.

Cooper was contemplating something. “That hand that pulled me out of the Lodge… was it you?”

Harry looked at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I never saw you in my vision, but I _felt_ you. I think because you were outside, watching, waiting, caring, you helped me escape. Maybe inadvertently, but you did it nonetheless.”

The pair looked at each other for a moment, a bit scared by the implications of this statement.

Cooper smiled and the stars in his eyes twinkled again. “Love is the most powerful force in the world, Sheriff.”

Cooper and Harry hugged, and everything was very, very right.


End file.
